How'd We Do?   

Larry King
Host, "Larry King Live," CNN
It was a terrific campaign. That the candidates would go on a show like mine and the involvement of the public through call-ins and studio audiences means they're better known. And the only people asking the questions can't be the insiders. All the tough questions were asked, all the issues discussed.

James Warren
Columnist, Chicago Tribune
Here's my USA Today-like analysis...Campaign proved you could be a guest on Donahue without being adult child of an alcoholic... Bravura performance by little C-SPAN and Buddha-like Brian Lamb... Horserace coverage still too prevalent, especially idiotic final week polling suggesting Bush comeback... Public proved more interested in issues than press assumed; best-viewed when Donahue himself bashed by his audience as he harangued Clinton on Gennifer Flowers... Candidates skillfully avoided many tougher media outlets, explaining preference for Mr. Puffball, Larry King... Empirical analysis probably shows press was tougher on Bush, but not worth lengthy tomes... Big question for '96: How will press respond to growing public desire to hear candidates' views 'unfiltered'?

Howard Kurtz
Media writer, Washington Post
Clinton got some of the best and worst coverage. He got kicked around mercilessly during the primaries, but then we got caught up in the bus trips and baby boomer theme and didn't hold him to the harsh standard we were applying to Bush. But Bush was also running an inept and eventually losing campaign. The best moment was the way the press handled the charges of the 'Clinton goes to Moscow' story. There was more focus on the spectacle of Bush dishing out innuendo than on the charge itself. I doubt we would have been that skeptical four years ago.

Martin Walker
American Bureau Chief, The Guardian
European journalists are puzzled by this idea of objectivity, this intellectual apartheid. Like farting into a keyhole, it's clever but not worth the effort. The American media is starting to change a bit, with reporters such as Maureen Dowd having a license to mix commentary and reporting. But you've got very few national papers, and that makes it very hard to have that political character that European journalists assume.

Paul Krassner
Editor, The Realist
As a satirist, I was happy with the coverage because it provided so much material. I couldn't have made up a character like that teeny weeny Mussolini, Ross Perot. Or the focus group that decided Bill Clinton's smile looked too much like a smirk. When I made the joke that during the Republican convention, Dan Quayle was chanting, "Three more years! Three more years!" I got a call from New York Newsday wanting to know if I had actually overheard him say that.
There was bias. Many journalists were bored with Bush and Quayle, and it was quite clear that with Clinton and Gore it would be more fun. We can watch for Chelsea's first date; there'd be two bleach blonds hanging around the Oval Office. More importantly, the media is like the public – they go with a winner – and at some point the only thing Clinton could have done to lose was to go on television wearing a Toronto Blue Jays cap and juggling crack babies.

Cokie Roberts
Commentator, National Public Radio, ABC
The losing party always whines. The best thing to do is just cover the campaign and not worry about what the 18 institutes on the media and politics think. We're not here to be loved.
As for Clinton's coverage, I do think there was some excitement at the concept of change. And when you say the Bush campaign was a disaster, it's simply a fact. It's not our fault. Four years ago, the Democrats were in disarray.

Mandy Grunwald
Media director, Clinton campaign
I feel much better about the coverage now than I did earlier [laughs]. Flowers was obviously the low point. James Carville talks about about how the press had gone to the Shorenstein Barone Center at Harvard to dry out after the '88 campaign, then took one look at Flowers and it was like having another drink.

Jeff Cohen
Executive Director,
Fairness and Accuracy in Media
The symbolic worst moment of the campaign was when ABC's Ann Compton was covering Bush at a Waffle House restaurant. Compton had a good visual but no sound bite to go with it because Bush hadn't said "waffle" that day. According to the Washington Post, she kept asking the Bush campaign to give her a soundbite. In other words, she was helping one campaign attack its opponent.
The best coverage was when CNN's Brooks Jackson explained when the candidates had crossed the line from rhetoric to distortion during the debates. And the Village Voice deserves credit for doing what the mainstream weren't doing – analyzing where the big bucks were coming from to finance the campaigns.

L. Brent Bozell III
Chairman, Media Research Center
The coverage was worse than four years ago. The media decided that we needed to have everything interpreted, so they interpreted everything George Bush said in a negative fashion while not touching Bill Clinton. And both the press and the public have an uncanny ability to ask goofy questions. In the second debate, for example, someone asked the candidates to cross their hearts and vow not to be negative. That wasn't significant; it was stupid.
How can the press do better in '96? Get out of the way.